Suitable SATA drives for servers

[sidewinder]

What do you all use?

 

In the past I've used WD RE drives since they have a large cache and are listed as enterprise class. However currently only the 1Tb seems to be available, and as drive prices are still quite high, it isnt cheap (although £100 per drive isnt too bad I suppose) Also, I'm dubious about using such large drives for RAID5 following various discussions on here

 

Realistically can I get away with 'normal' grade SATA drives or should I stick to the enterprise ones? And do any other manufacturers make drives similar to the RE4?

 

Or should I just go for the 1Tb and use them in RAID1? Realistically 1Tb per volume is about what I need (we're a small school).

[jamesfed]

What data are you going to be storing on the drives?

 

I've been going with 2TB SATAs for our CCTV/Media Servers however for the time being its SAS Nearline for all our servers/user data.

[sidewinder]

One server has Hyper-V VMs on it, the other would be user data.

 

I use SATA for almost everything currently, do have SAS drives for system disks in some servers but thats it.

[AngryTechnician]

Questions over reliability aside, the main issue with consumer grade disk is warranty.

 

For example, WD reserve the right to replace failed consumer drives with an 'equivalent or better' drive under warranty. If you're using RAID, any difference in the drive might make it incompatible with the RAID array. With server drives, the warranty ensures you get a drive back that will work with the existing RAID.

[zag]

We use Intel 300 series 300gb or 600gb SSDs on all our Hyper-V hosts these days.

 

Makes them nice and fast to switch off in a power cut scenario thats for sure

[sidewinder]

Questions over reliability aside, the main issue with consumer grade disk is warranty.

 

For example, WD reserve the right to replace failed consumer drives with an 'equivalent or better' drive under warranty. If you're using RAID, any difference in the drive might make it incompatible with the RAID array. With server drives, the warranty ensures you get a drive back that will work with the existing RAID.

 

Thanks, very good point. That's the sort of thing I needed to know. For that alone, I think I'll avoid them

[sonofsanta]

Worth noting that the HP SATA Drives are often just WD Caviar Blacks.

[zag]

Also worth noting that the 1tb or 2tb drives are far less reliable than a 500gb drive due to its platter density.

[sparkeh]

Worth noting that the HP SATA Drives are often just WD Caviar Blacks.

That still the case?

Last year all the HP WD disks in the RAID went wrong and their replacements were Seagate. I thought they had changed to them now.

[sonofsanta]

That still the case?

Last year all the HP WD disks in the RAID went wrong and their replacements were Seagate. I thought they had changed to them now.

 

Not a clue - I don't get to buy servers all that often this was last July iirc. Not had any problems with them myself, but then I tend to prefer WD as a brand anyway - maybe I'm just lucky with them...

[gshaw]

Dunno what EMC hard drives are inside but that's all I'd put our SAN... the higher-capacity drives are NL-SAS for our VNXe